Library Day in the Life 6 – Friday

28 Jan Library Day in the Life 6 – Friday

This week I’m participating in the Library Day in the Life project which charts the day-to-day activities of library workers at different points of the year. This is the fourth time I’ve participated; you can see my earlier posts from July 2009, January 2010 and July 2010. I’m currently a full-time Researcher at Evidence Base, Birmingham City University, UK. This will be the first time I complete the project in this role and I hope it helps explain a little bit about the type of work I do.

Today I chose to work from home – I find it easier to focus at home and it saves me 3hrs travelling and £6.80. I’m glad I have the option of working from home on days when it makes more sense to do so. I wish I could tell you about my fabulous home office environment but unfortunately it’s just a desk in the corner of our bedroom (my partner works from home full time so he has the spare room next door). It seems to work well for me though, and it’s good to have company for the odd break from the screen (and always good to have cat cuddles at various points throughout the day!).

The day was focused on three main tasks, none of which are that interesting I’m afraid:

Making changes to the deposit survey I’ve been working on following yesterday’s feedback – I thought this would be a really quick job but my brain just wasn’t in gear this morning so it took a lot longer than it should have

Organising documents and gadgets (iPad and Kindle) ready for various meetings next week. I’m travelling down to London on Monday morning so I’ve got reading material for the journey, and then we have Monday and Tuesday full with meetings, then back to Birmingham on Wed for another meeting

Applying for a funding bursary for conference attendance. I really want to attend ALA Annual this June so have been investigating various options to get the funds to attend. I thought I had a couple of weeks left, but yesterday realised January was almost over (I blame having a Christmas meal last night!) so I had to sort it. The closing date for one of the applications was today so I finalised the application and sent it off this afternoon, fingers crossed it was received in time!

So that’s pretty much my week – it’s been a pretty typical week for me – out and about at events/meetings, some working from home, some conference calls and Skype calls, and a day in the office. I don’t normally have as much going on in the evenings though, so I’m looking forward to an evening in front of the TV with some cross stitching tonight! 🙂